184 Responses

So buying a game through Steam takes planning and foresight and a close eye on the download speed and meter, so I can pause it when we’re close to 2Gb and the resume it the next day. It annoys me.

I can see why!

I’ve just given up a Wired Country account that I’d been running alongside the DSL because it had the magic attribute of the ISP being unable to measure the traffic properly. But it didn’t make sense financially and at 3Mbit/s, it was looking a bit slow, so I cancelled that and upped our Telecom DSL cap to 80GB.

Unfortunately, just after I did that – and after I’d told the boys to do any big downloads on Wired Country while we had it – they went and got Dragon Age and the both the Mac and Windows clients for Portal 2, knocking out more than half the new cap in one go. We soon went over and, unfortunately, the 80GB cap came on a different account type which had throttling rather than overage charges.

Ha, I was round at your floor manager's house the other day, digging through exactly that box - it's gems aplenty, and yes, I too dragged out Throw Your Arms Around Me and remembered my first flat on The Terrace...

I also managed to snaffle one of three copies in her box of Paul Hardcastle's '19', cos while I have a big collection of 80s 7", that one had eluded me. Thanks Sarah!

I love Throw Your Arms, it is one of my favourite Aussie songs... Where I used to live, in Newtown (Sydney), I once was walking down King St and could hear it being sung but couldn't work out where. As I walked I realised it was a local pub, the Coopers Arms, and essentially the entire pub was singing along to an acoustic duo. It remains one of my "must dos"; spontaneously singalong to a Hunters song or perhaps the Streets of Your Town by the Go Betweens:

I was lucky eough to see the Hoodoos in Melbourne 2009 (I was heavily pregnant at the time, which made bopping a bit precarious). They all looked SO old. Whereas I'm sure I looked as fresh-faced as I did when I first saw them an age ago at the Powerstation. Anyway - they still rocked - sung myself hoarse (even sober).

I had this argument on friendbook the other day, re Jon Bon Jovi's comments that Steve Jobs killed music. I think the iPod, the MP3 etc, has not only revived, but actually created an interest in music for millions of people who wouldn't otherwise have much in their lives. By creating a new Walkman that everyone needed to have, the product has very much driven the desire for content.

Now this, on the Mutton Birds fansite, is how free music should be done:This page hosts rare or otherwise unavailable audio, mostly live recordings that aren't commercially available. The Mutton Birds' and Don McGlashan's studio albums can be bought online from Marbecks, Smoke CDs and Real Groovy among others.Notable for a lovely Finn-McGlashan version of 'Throw Your Arms Around Me' that you can just, like, have.

Yeah, that's a great way to do it. As for me, I'm one of those people who still spends hundreds of dollars on CDs. What happens is I tend to download something, or watch it on Youtube, and then if I like it, buy the album or compilation it came from, then load the bugger onto my iTunes so I can play it on my iPod while travelling. Or failing that, download the one song via legal means if that's the only one I like. It seems a horribly expensive and roundabout way of doing things, but it seems to satisfy my conscience, as foolish as that may seem.

I'm in the middle of a major Paul Kelly bro'mance. He supported Dylan last week, doing a small acoustic set with his nephew Dan Kelly. I also saw him at a book signing. Sadly I missed his concert series, A - Z, each and every song. Cool.

I have a favourite "Sweetwaters moment" memory of the guy from Daddy Cool in his new band (can't remember their name, can't remember the name of the song that made them briefly famous) - at the end of their set, every member of the band (there were about 7) except for the drummer donned guitars, and they did a completely over-the-top rendition of Eagle Rock, complete with synchronised guitar moves and large doses of tongue in cheek - it was a hoot.

Mark Seymour's book about H&C - '13 Tonne Theory' - is one of the best music books I've read in a long time (and I'm not their biggest fan). Great insight into the workings of a far from conventionally structured band. Very funny too... 'Throw Your Arms...' was the final straw in one of the members leaving. He has also has very fond memories of an Auckland gig (Gluepot?). Two other very good music books - Paul Kelly's 'How To Make Gravy' and Robert Forster's 'The 10 Rules of Rock'n'Roll'. Australia Day....

I deeply dislike the phenomenon of people who can damn well afford to pay for work grabbing artists' entire catalogues in one torrent. I get a bit embarrassed if people, meaning well, give me copies of contemporary albums that I could buy if I wanted to.

I also have a theory that it destroys music for the grabber. If you nabbed the 70GBs of music off one of my hard drives you'd have an instant ridiculously good (ahem) music collection but it would be a hard thing to penetrate. Gems would be lost, whole back catalogues would be rendered valueless and unlistened. Part of enjoying music is the finding, researching, the context of place and time, and always the listening.

Like Melissa Lee, I enjoy a good mixtape, so I try to create 1 CD per season of my favourite new tunes that I have collected. I give this out to a few select mates who'll hopefully enjoy some of them. I'm happy to do this and hopefully it means they go away and buy some of the CDs the music came from (most of them are still old school CD buyers). But I'd never consider burning whole GBs of tunes for people because it's not right, and they wouldn't get the same value out of it anyway.

On a side note, I was at a friends 50th party a few weeks ago. He had his decks set out and when he dropped the new James Blake single (Limit to your love) on brand new shiny vinyl and that big bass drop kicked in, we all fell about high-fiving like teenagers. Music isn't a digital commodity like blocks of cheese, it's best sampled personally and properly.